CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Salamanca it runs 213 km to Salamanca; allow about 2 h 33 of riding. The stops in between: Hermitage of San Segundo, Church of Santa María de la Cabeza, Convent of La Encarnación and Church of San Martín. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Salamanca glows. Its buildings are built from a golden sandstone that takes on a honey colour in low sun, and the effect, especially in the late afternoon in the Plaza Mayor, is memorable. The city stands on the Tormes river in western Spain, about 800 metres above sea level, and is one of the great university towns of Europe, with a student population that gives the old streets life well into the night.
Read the complete Salamanca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Salamanca is where the day begins. Next is Hermitage of San Segundo.
Outside the great medieval walls of Ávila, down by the river Adaja, a small Romanesque church stands among trees, quiet and often overlooked by the crowds heading for the walls and the cathedral. The Hermitage of San Segundo is dedicated to the first bishop of Ávila, according to tradition one of seven early missionaries sent to Spain, and it holds an alabaster statue of the saint at prayer, carved in the sixteenth century by the sculptor Juan de Juni. The building itself is simple and austere, with a beautiful carved doorway, and it is a lovely, peaceful place to visit. It is part of the UNESCO listing of the Old Town of Ávila with its Extra-Muros Churches.
Read the complete Hermitage of San Segundo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hermitage of San Segundo comes up about 105 km into the recorded legs. Next is Church of Santa María de la Cabeza.
Ávila is the highest provincial capital in Spain, at about 1,130 metres, and you feel it in the air even in summer. Its walls, begun in the late eleventh century and finished in the twelfth, run for around two and a half kilometres with 88 towers and nine gates, and they are among the best-preserved medieval city walls in Europe. The Church of Santa María de la Cabeza stands just outside the old town, close enough to the ramparts that a rider can park and walk in a few minutes, and it belongs to the group of Romanesque churches that UNESCO added to the old town's listing.
Read the complete Church of Santa María de la Cabeza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least about 107 km into the recorded legs you reach Church of Santa María de la Cabeza. Next is Convent of La Encarnación.
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada entered the Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila in 1535, when she was about twenty, and she stayed for twenty-seven years. The convent was large, comfortable and rather sociable, with visitors in the parlour and a lively social life among the nuns, and it was only after decades of illness, prayer and unease that she left in 1562 to found a small, strict house of her own, San José, the first of her reformed Carmelite convents. She became Saint Teresa of Jesus, one of the great writers of the Spanish language, and her cell and the rooms where she lived are still shown in the convent, a short distance outside the old walls.
Read the complete Convent of La Encarnación write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Convent of La Encarnación, about halfway. Next is Church of San Martín.
Ávila has a way of making you feel as though the walls are the only thing holding the past in place, but San Martín reminds you that the neighbourhoods around the churches were once lively parishes of their own. The city had many such parishes in the Middle Ages, each with its own church, its own priest and its own sense of rivalry with the next. Today they mostly sit quietly, built of the same grey-gold granite as the walls, and a walk from one to the next shows how the town's life was once organised.
Read the complete Church of San Martín write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of San Martín sits at 120 km, about halfway. Next is back through Convent of La Encarnación.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Convent of La Encarnación write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Convent of La Encarnación comes up about 110 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Church of Santa María de la Cabeza.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of Santa María de la Cabeza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 111 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Church of Santa María de la Cabeza. Next is back through Hermitage of San Segundo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hermitage of San Segundo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hermitage of San Segundo, late in the day. Next is Salamanca.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Salamanca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 213 km.
Salamanca → Hermitage of San Segundo is 105 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Hermitage of San Segundo → Salamanca is 105 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.